forever is an awfully long time
by ten.years.only.with.you
Summary: She wonders with the magenta kitchen painted on a whim and the vines growing with age around the sunflower door if forever will be long enough for them. klaroline


forever is an awfully long time [jm barrie]

x

She doesn't tell anyone that she sent him an invitation. Written in blood red ink on cream colored cardstock, golden announcement sealed safely inside. On the back of the paper, she scripts a short message, a few words, ones that she runs over time and time over in her mind, Mediterranean eyes poring through the swishes and strikes of her letters, the delicate swoop of her cursive.

Doesn't ask for money or a gift, even a penned letter of his own, just simple phrases that she knows he will store in the pocket of his charcoal suit, feel against the grain of his fingers, will perch a lilting smirk on his bee stung lips.

_If you don't show up, I'll kill you. _

x

With confident hands, she swipes his address, brand new Louisiana zip code, and stares at the cardstock for a moment. It's odd that she can't just hand deliver it to his mansion, breathe deeply the lavender and sunflowers outside in mason jar pots on the front porch, inhale the smoky chocolate and leather in the foyer, gaze at the lake through his bay kitchen windows. His home is here, Mystic Falls, not some big jazz city down the gulf coast with lazy summer afternoons and star bitten magnolias. She loathes him silently for the letters she scratched so difficultly across the envelope.

She drives by for the hell of it. The flowers are slowly wilting on the porch, and she feels herself deflate just a bit.

x

The envelope is crisp and perfect and warm from the late May sun in his aluminum mailbox. He had it painted cerulean (but he also had convinced himself that it was not painted to match the shade of her eyes) against the stark contrast of his violets in the terracotta planter by the front door. A stamp is faded with the outline of a sparrow, her slants of writing in crimson, a light scent of honey and lavender coming with the parchment. Klaus sighs deeply, remembering her ivory skin kissed with rose in the cheeks, the buttery whorls of curls falling in unorganized pattern on her collarbone, the tulip pout of lips with wit laced between. A flood of emotions wrenches him, makes him come undone, and he almost rushes back to small town Virginia with the earth underfoot, the wind howling in his ears. Almost.

Ripping the paper with one tawny finger, he glances over the golden calligraphy, turns it over, reading her inscription, feels a chuckle bubble in his throat. Even states and time zones and eons of lifetimes away, his awe for her never ceases.

Later that night, with a tumbler of scotch in his hands, the New Orleans jazz flitting around his open windows, he smiles, staring at the charcoal suit pressed at the ready hanging from a hook in his closet.

x

Klaus never tells any of them that he will be showing up for graduation. He has to make a detour first.

Tyler has been roaming around the Midwest, leaving tracks in places that Klaus is sure the boy didn't believe that he would fine. Nailing him down with each movement, but he finds him killing time in a small suburb of Sioux Falls, in the Dakotas, big swallowing landscapes and daunting arrays of green fields, uncountable tangerine poppies and pure daisies littering the stretches of highway as the Original makes his way into town. He finds the boy at a diner, nursing a cup of coffee, slaps the map right out of his left hand and stills a chuckle as he bites back venom and forces out the words like an upchuck. The only thing keeping him sane is the way that he knows she will look at him for this, that brings him back down to earth.

Giving Klaus a look of shock, Tyler retreats with his tail between his legs, a quizzical furrow upon his brow, and as he looks over his shoulder at his sire once more, calls out, "Why?" Wind brings the words to Klaus' ears, hears the disdain in the boy's voice, thinking there has to be an ulterior motive. With a simple grin that reaches slate green bottled orbs, Klaus climbs back into his car, doesn't answer, and begins the drive hom—to Mystic Falls.

x

He always has to make an entrance, and holy hell, does he, she thinks, the graduation cap whizzing by her with his brute energy channeled through the vessel. The witch that four seconds ago had her jeweled fingers tightening around her pretty little neck, loses her head, and she would laugh because there is something so fucked up about Mystic Falls that no one even flinches when her ebony head rolls to the side, and they walk off with sass in their steps and diplomas in hand.

She's not shocked that he showed, because she basically threatened within an inch of his life, as much as a baby vampire could threaten the immortal existence of the first creature on the earth, but it still fissures something hot in her belly how he decapitates the magicked, purses his lips at her, tilts his head in a bow, and she smiles back at him. _For Christ sake._

Remember when he was their biggest fear, sleeping with one watercolored eye open, buried beneath layers upon layers of soft cotton sheets, all the lights on in her house, like an eerie bathing lamp on a dim street…?

Yeah, her either.

x

By the time he has reached Damon, force fed blood down his throat the younger, cockier vampire is bemoaning that damn doppelganger, waxing poetic so much so that even Klaus with his romantic paintings, gems, and gestures, is nauseous. Ghost Alaric, the hunter, pushes the Original onwards, holds his best friend's hand with a bottle of bourbon in the crook of his elbow.

Klaus whispers away to the stadium, night air protectively holding him in a cocoon, moonlight slashing graphically in a hush over empty chairs. On the carpet with her legs folded beneath her, Caroline is perched, one ankle crossed over the other, the flounce of her dress rippling in the breeze. Her hair is loose in waves around her shoulders, a chaotic mess, her tulip pout rubbed raw from kissing and talking with excitement all day, muddled watercolored eyes drinking in the last remaining bits of how her life began and ended at seventeen. He feels his breath go shallower with her in his grasp.

His voice breaks through the stillness, causes ripples outward to her, and she rises slowly in response, rushes up to him in a hurry, almost hurls her body into him. The restraint showing in her tense bones, how her limbs stifle, fingers cramp at the knuckles, but Klaus doesn't mind, enjoys how drawn they are to one another, how he feels completely klutzy and imperfect and even human in her presence. And he doesn't even give a damn cause he'd rather be this man with than that monster he was once revered to be for millennia.

Pulling the stiff cream envelope with her loopy cursive, crimson letters slanted, glinting in the light of the high moon, she regards him as he dictates her message back to him about graduation and moving forward, mini fridges and money, but the one gift that she wants, desires, is young enough to still find foolishly plausible in her heart, but the one that makes him wonder when and how and where. You can be the oldest living being and never have all the answers, but she is the only thing he wants to spend the rest of his forever answering. And well, forever is an awfully long time. He has learnt how to be patient.

x

The disbelief in her eyes makes up for any doubt that might have boiled in his belly.

"Tyler is now free to return to Mystic Falls," he says, watching the way her eyes widen, the birth of a smile on that tulip pout. "He is your first love." He tells her this matter of factly because she is so young and pure and good and he will give her all he has.

"I intend to be your last. However long it takes."

Klaus hears the breath catch in her throat, how her heart skips once in her chest, how she can tells that he is drinking her in, understands the certainty in her eyes and that tick of a smile up the side of her porcelain cheek. In invitation she tilts her face, closes her eyes as he leans in, the scruff of his shadow flushing on her pink tinge, his bee stung lips making an imprint that could not ever be copied nor redone, and halfway through the kiss, his bottle green eyes fly open because in eons of lifetimes on this godforsaken hell hole of a planet, he has not once felt peace, until now.

It courses through him, the afterwaves of how she peers up at him through coal laced lashes, the world before him in her glance, memorizing the curvature of his jaw, the bow's arrow of his mouth, the malignance in those suddenly softened slated eyes. He offers her his elbow, she glides through it seamlessly, their bodies melting together.

x

A few weeks later, she's nursing a strawberry margarita lying on a beach towel in the front lawn of her house. It's summer all of right now with hot nights and hotter days, green grass that is blinding and a Virginia robin's egg blue sky so bright that she has to wear her retro bleach sunglasses everywhere. Her bikini is fire engine red against her creamy skin, the whorls of butter in a top knot on the crown of her head, and brow furrowed, lips pursed around the straw, fingernails painted coral pink and aquamarine teal running over the letters.

Caroline turns over the envelope with the Loyola seal on the top right hand corner and smiles against the plastic rim of her cup. She won't wait for her forever to begin. It will begin now.

x

Klaus Mikaelson waters his lavender plants in their window box on a Tuesday morning in late August, the air changing, hurricane type winds kissing his new violet buds, their stalks dancing in the breeze. The world goes on without him below his loft in the French Quarter, music and chatter floating up against a brewing storm on the gulf coast. A light rap of fist against screen door jars his sense back down to the doorbell which rings out in loud, Louisiana fashion. His screen is painted the color of sunflowers to go with his Mediterranean tinged mailbox.

Throwing open the door, fingers clasped around the brassy knob, it flies open, and she stands on his porch wearing a sundress with ivory flowers on the hem, accentuating her flirty legs, cream ribbon along the ribs, pulling his eyes to her breasts, a thin charm around her neck on a strand of whispery silver, confidence masked by shyness in her face.

She doesn't speak, extends a hand, pressing an envelope into his palm. Klaus meets her eyes, never breaking the gaze as he unceremoniously tears the parchment, and then with a quick intake of air examines its contents. Caroline grins, the actions breaking her face into a thousand rays of dancing sun, mysteries written on her lips and truth in her eyes. She nods, doesn't say anything about forever, doesn't speak of eternities to be had and held in closed fists upon beating chests. Instead she leans in and he tilts his head downward, facing her forward, always progressing, and kisses him with all she has.

His eyes remain closed and hers wide open, waiting with baited breath for the future to catch up.

x

Some days when she's standing in their kitchen that they painted magenta on a whim with the kettle on making afternoon tea and NOLA humidity wreaking havoc on her curls and the plants are weaving insane vines around the front door, she wonders if forever will be long enough. And then he smiles at her, in that way that makes her heart beat erratic and_ wonderful_ and she knows that forever is an awfully long time, but with him, she'd take longer.


End file.
